SINISTER STREET

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 September 1928, Page 12

SINISTER STREET

EDINBURGH’S THOROUGHFARE.

The Royal Mile in Edinburgh is a thoroughfare with a more sinister and romantic history than any other in Europe. Extending from the Castle to Holyrood, along what are now Lawn Market, High Street, and Cannongate, it was the scene, two centuries ago, of Royal processions, executions, riots, and every conceivable kind of atrocity. Royal processions from the Castle to Holyrood were not, in those days, the decorous and popular affairs they are now. The mobs which thronged the thoroughfare seldom showed respect for royalty. On one occasion even the Queen was jostled, insulted and cursed by the crowd.

Queensberry House was associated with the signing of the Treaty of Union, and the scene of a particularly gruesome murder. The crime was committed by the Duke of Queenberry’s idiot heir, Lord Drumlanrig. During the signing of the Treaty, with which the Duke was entrusted, the half-witted heir was left for an hour in Queensberry House with a Cannongate spit-boy. Though Lord Drumlanrig was generally considered to be harmless, he often had violent periods, when he had to be restrained. On this occasion he must have had a sudden fit of acute madness.

When the remainder of the household returned,. flushed with the excite- 1 ment of an historic occasion, they discovered the spit-boy was missing. They asked'Lord Drumlanrig where he was but he professed 1 unconcerned ignorance. ■ > Nothing in the arrangements of the house suggested foul play. But on examining the spit, the pantry hand .saw inside it what looked like a human body. It proved to be the roasted body of the spit-boy, hanging on a hook.

The ducal household was promptly summoned, and an examination was made of the body, which' showed that the boy must have been murdered before being fastened in the spit. On the lighter side of life the Royal Mile had. its moments. The story is told of how that merry-heart-ed tomboy, the Duchess of Gordon, who was “even more noted for her beauty than her wit,” challenged her sister to a pig race down the Royal Mile. The sprightly duchess is said to have had some difficulty in “getting aboard” her mount, but succeeded after much perseverance and laughter. Once “up” she soon had the pii going, but history does not seem to relate who won the race or whether the pigs stayed the course. At any rate the race formed the subject for amusing anecdotes afterwards. Another amusing story is associated with a house in Byres Close, where .the great Scottish judge, Lord Coalstoun, lived. The judge was leaning from his window one day when two tom-boys on the upper floor, undeterred by the immense dignity of the great man below, attached a kitten to the end of a string and lowered it on to his head. When the string was jerked upwards the kitten’s claws whipped off the judge’s wig. Whether Lord Coalstoun received this contretemps with dignified Conor entered into the spirit of the thing and waved an amicably reproving finger at the window above, it would be interesting to know! At any rate, we are told that the judge’s friends were not averse to a little leg-pulling on the subject.

Tragedy again -crept into the Royal Mile with the assassination of Lord President Lockhart by a disappointed litigant, one John Chiesley, the Squire of Dairy, whose hatred the judge had incurred.

Chiesley had prowled about nursing his grievance until he worked himself into a frenzy and finally decided to murder the judge. The Lord President was in the habit of attending St. Giles Cathedral, and Chiesley loitered about until the service ended.

After leaving the church with a friend, the Lord President proceeded up the Royal Mile, little suspecting that he was closely followed by the Squire of Dairy, who shot the judge dead as he was entering Old Bank Close.

Chiesley was hanged and his body left to swing in chains, on the gallows between Edinburgh and Leith. When his skeleton was unearthed many years later at Dairy the pistol with which he murdered Lockhart was found attached to his neck. Hundreds of people were executed in the Royal Mile. Some were hanged, some went to the block, others were guillotined. Sir Walter Scott sat at a window opposite the gallows when Burke, the body-snatcher, was executed. The spot is marked by three stones let into the roadway near the north end of George IV. bridge. A vast concourse witnessed this event, because of the specially atrocious character of Burke’s crimes.